Pentecostal Possibilities or "The Story of My Life"
by Milton Lorenzo (M. L.) Haney
CHAPTER 58
Miracle of Grace
In the seventh evangelistic year I held, or took part in, thirty four distinct meetings, including seven camp meetings and attended and labored in seven hundred and six services, being at home three times, and rested twenty-seven days in all. These services took place in Illinois Iowa, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska. We were in a battle at Albia, Iowa, over three weeks, beginning Dec. 3rd, 1881. Had victory, but not an easy one. There was then a depth of opposition to the holiness work which has increased as the years have come and gone, bringing results too painful to record. No individual, or party, can take sides against holiness without an evil harvest resulting, unless there is speedy repentance and a rapid flight to Christ. Much seemed to be done, but we came out only with a mixture of pain and pleasure. The latter because of what was done, the former because the Holy Spirit had been hindered by those who professed to love Him.
Through Brother Baxter, a dry goods merchant then at Knoxville, Ia., we were called by Brother Robinson the pastor, to help him in a meeting. The pastor was anxious to have a gracious work, but was at first puzzled with my teaching on holiness. He was among the most clever men I ever worked with but he found it difficult, when the treasure hidden in the field was offered him, to sell all he had in order to get it! There was a local preacher who was a carpenter who had the experience and was thoroughly reliable. Brother Baxter was then in clear light and had the work on his heart. These two men were all the human help upon which I could lean. The people would come out, but how they rebelled against the truth! In the hottest of the battle Baxter stood right by and I felt his help almost indispensable. My room was upstairs at his house, and I had just retired one night when I heard the patter of a child's feet on the stairway and the little girl cried out, "Papa has broken his arm; won't you please come down," and I heard the groans of her father below. He had slipped on an icy walk in the back yard and put his elbow out of joint! Oh! thought I, what will I do without Brother Baxter? The second day from that a messenger came saying my local preacher had fallen from a scaffold and broken his leg! So my last earthly prop had gone from under me, and the meeting was passing a dangerous crisis! What would I do? I was like Mr. Wesley's Catholic girl who was weeping on the street, and being asked the cause cried out, "O Sir, I have lost my crucifix, I have lost my crucifix, and now I have nothing left to trust in but God Almighty!" But fleeing to the Lord He broke through and as great a meeting has never been held in Knoxville! There were 134 converted, 37 reclaimed, 67 sanctified and a host of heart backsliders saved.
We had a good service at Nauvoo, the Mormon City, but found the curse of God on the place.
We shared that year in the glorious National Camp at Round Lake, N. Y., where a multitude received the truth from the great souls of Inskip, McDonald and others specially anointed of the Lord. What an unspeakable blessing those men were to that generation. If the whole Methodist ministry had fallen in with them and followed the light given, the present fearful decline in spirituality would have been substituted by the greatest revival of the ages. O, our Methodism is not guiltless before God in the treatment now given to her central doctrine of holiness!
We had a second great meeting at Carmargo. I think it would have excelled the first if it had not been hindered by some brethren, who had continuously to ventilate their notions. The showing off of new discoveries by erratic minds has always mixed and hindered the work of God. But many will bless God in eternity for the second camp meeting at Camargo, Ills. We had one of a series of great little camps on the Big Walnut River, Kansas, in Brother Green's grove. Brother and Sister Green had a great body of land in that locality, and largely supported the camps. What they have suffered since those days! If still living, I trust in their darkest trials they will remember what a blessing they were to me, how God used them on Big Walnut River, and the souls saved on their grounds. If not forgotten, we would have marvels of grace to record, which took place in those camps.
In our eighth evangelistic year, the meetings were generally of greater length. There were twenty in all, including eleven camp meetings.
God gave us gracious victor in St. Joseph, Mo. A real man of God was in the pulpit at the First M. E. Church, and some good people had gathered round him. An evangelist has great advantage where a Holy Ghost pastor has prepared the ground and the breath of life is among the pews when he begins. St. Joseph would have been the Kansas City of that southwestern region had it not been for the marked disloyalty of its leaders in the early part of the war. It is a strong city as it is, but lost its chances to lead in the southwest. The Church South was the much stronger body, and war prejudices still prevailed, but the Lord's hungry sheep came and we did our best to feed them. Many were converted and sanctified.
On a revisit to Albany we found some had suffered loss, but the great mass were going on with God. One of our best girls had married an ungodly young man, who had sapped the spiritual life from her soul. I saw her pale, discouraged face, her sunken eyes, and witnessed the uprising sigh which testified as to the loss of God from her soul. O, when will God's young saints cease thus to jeopardize their souls? The memory of her bereft condition pains me twenty years away.
Among the precious services of this year was the protracted meeting at Wilton, Iowa. How many sinners in that service came bounding out of death into life. Wife was there helping me, and we had a glorious time. A large number were sanctified, and pastor and people blessed. We found a pleasant home with Sister McNaughton, who was a blessed helper. Dr. Cooling was rich in the things of God, and helped us much. Brother Bacon, the banker, was in the battle and an inspiration to the work. We will meet the saints from Wilton bye and bye.
A long and somewhat effective service was held in Muscatine, Iowa. Brother Haines was the pastor of the First M. E. Church in which we held the meetings. He was a man of strength, and a true servant of the Lord. Before we left he professed the experience of holiness. The success of the meeting was greatly impaired by the agency of a powerful woman, who threw her whole soul against everything looking toward a holy heart. She has met God since then, and found out all about it.
We had a blessed service with Brother Davis in Park Avenue M. E. Church, Chicago, and some glorious saints are yet living who came into the fountain then. Dear Brother Davis walked with God, and furnished his people with the Gospel as preached by Paul and Wesley and the fruit of his labor will be seen for many days to come. Afterwards a Holiness Assembly was held in this church where a wild element would have carried the day, had not Davis and his people come up as a reserve force. Brother Davis was a member of the National Association, but for years has been in the world where all the people are holy!
This year the Illinois State Holiness Camp Meeting was held at Toledo, Ills. That Association was a great power for many years, and, all told, probably the most successful Association that has ever been in the State. My heart ached when it was disbanded. They called the National men often, to hold their meetings, and in no case through all the years was their meeting a failure. Wm. Hussey was its first President, and John R. Jones followed him. Brother H. has long since gone to his reward, but Brother Jones yet lives. Doctor Clarke, the great Quaker evangelist, was one of the workers in the Toledo camp. Grand old hero, he left his mark on a host of souls, and we can never forget him. What a benediction forever, to be associated with such men! Many were led in this meeting to the Lord.
In this year we had three camp meetings in Nebraska in each of which God was revealed, and souls saved. A glorious camp was also held at Huntsville, Ills. This is in the bounds of Brother Patterson's old circuit of holiness evangelism. Eternity will show up a harvest of souls gathered from his ministry on that field.
Our camp at Big Walnut, Kansas, transcended any which had preceded it. We had no tabernacle, and it rained for days, but the rain of the Holy Spirit transcended the other. There were times when it was difficult for a sinner to live on that ground without yielding to God.
Brother Abbott, of Southwestern Kansas Conference, was to have been with me in a camp preceding this, but wrote me he could not consistently, because his wife was going rapidly with consumption; that he was fixing to take her to the Big Walnut Camp, which would be her last meeting on earth. When I arrived I found his tent was close to the stand where she could lie on her couch and hear the preaching. I was surprised to see how far she had gone toward death in a single year. She was almost perpetually hacking and looked as though she might not survive the camp meeting. On the platform one day I was much moved about her case. It struck me that when she died it would break up her husband's ministry, and I stepped down to where she was and said: "Sister Abbott have you ever thought the Lord might heal you and send you on to the end of your husband's ministry?" "Yes," she said, "but I don't know." "Well," I said, "you lay that matter before Him." The rain prevented any service except in the tents, and Brother Helm's tent, being the largest, was a center of prayer. I was kept at Brother Green's house, some rods away, and they started a prayer meeting in that tent. Sister Helm was a woman of great faith and felt she ought to have Sister Abbott in her tent to be prayed for. So they fixed a seat in the center of the tent, and she and Brother Abbott took her carefully there. She found she could not sit up and they fixed her a couch on which she was lying while they prayed. I heard from the hillside a tremendous shout and went down to see what God was doing, and found Sister Abbott running round among them like a girl praising God with a clear, strong voice, and the next day I made the following record in my book:
MIRACLE OF GRACE
Mrs. Martha S. Abbott, wife of Rev. E. B. Abbott, of the Southwestern Conference of the M. E. Church, Oxford, Sumner County, Kansas. Her father and mother both dead with consumption, and two sisters with her oldest daughter died with consumption. For thirty-three years her lungs have been affected. Since last November she has been failing rapidly. From the seventh of last December, then her house was burned, she has rarely been able to sit up one day. Dr. Wm. Middleton on examination pronounced one lung entirely destroyed and the other badly diseased fourteen months since. All her physicians corroborated the statement that she must die with consumption. She came Thursday, July 26th, 1883, to camp meeting on Big Walnut, Cowley County, Kansas. She and her husband both were impressed that she would not see another camp meeting. Becoming impressed after camp meeting began that God might heal her, she was led on Tuesday morning, July 31st, by Sister A. Helm, and Brother Abbott, to a tent where prayer was being offered, and, first sitting, and then lying down in said tent, she felt suddenly an omnipotent touch which was followed by a sense of healing, and, as in her conversion, this was followed by the witness of the Holy Spirit, that she was healed. She instantly rose and praised God, saying, "It is done, IT IS DONE!" From that moment she attended the meetings and the change in her appearance was so great that she seemed many years younger. Her age is forty-nine this fall. Being on the camp ground in person, I herewith testify to the above statement as personally witnessed, and obtained from Brother and Sister Abbott this first day of August, 1883, C.
Ground, Big Walnut, Kansas.
MILTON L. HANEY.
I saw her for a succession of summers, and on my last visit interrogated her closely. She is perfectly conscious of the absence of one lung, and the upper part of the other, but breathes easily and naturally, and from the time of her healing till that time, she had done her house work, her healed lung being well, and graciously kept and believed she never would die with consumption. I append the following statement as just received from Rev. E. B. Abbott:
"Augusta, Kansas, June 18, '03."
REV. M. L. HANEY:--
Dear Brother in Christ.--From her 15th year my wife had suffered with lung trouble, which by constant doctoring was partially relieved, but never cured, but continued to grow steadily worse till about one year before her miraculous healing, when the doctor pronounced her in the last stage of consumption, one lung gone and the other badly affected. At the time of our camp meeting at Green's Grove, on Walnut River, she was able to sit up but a little, but pleaded with tears in her eyes to be permitted to attend one more camp meeting. I could not resist such pleadings, conscious as we both were, her time was very short. I held her in my arms while she sat in the buggy and on reaching the ground pitched her tent near the end of the altar where she could lie on her bed and hear the preaching. She lay there from Thursday till Tuesday about 9 o'clock a.m. In consequence of rain we could have no public services, but the people had worship in their tents. About 9 a.m. on this eventful morning, the 27th of August, 1883, after making wife as comfortable as possible, I left her in care of our daughter, and started to go to Brother and Sister Helm's tent, to meeting. I had not gone far when I met Sister Helm skipping like a girl, who said, 'I am going after Sister Abbott to take her over and have her healed.' And we aided and partly carried her to the tent where a bed was prepared on which she could lie. The faithful gathered round her and began to plead with God to heal her, when the Holy Ghost came upon us, as if an unseen hand was pressing us to the earth, and suddenly a thrill from the battery of heaven swept through her diseased body, filling her with spiritual and physical power, so that she who fifteen minutes before required the assistance of two of us to enable her to walk, now sprang from her bed, over the top of my head, as I was bowed near her, shouting, 'It is done, IT IS DONE!' and from that time to the end of the camp engaged in the worship with others. Twenty years have nearly passed and she has never had a relapse. She has since been sick with la grippe and typhoid fever, but no lung trouble. Five years after her healing she was attacked, near Sterling, Kansas, with bloody flux in a malignant form, and was cured by her Divine physician in a moment of time.
"Your Brother in Christ,
"E. B. ABBOTT."
Brother Abbott's address is Augusta, Kansas, and he or his wife will gladly answer inquiries as to her healing as experienced since. Many yet live who witnessed her healing, and both of them are widely known in the Southwestern Kansas Conference.